Someone once said to me that one day, somebody must have been out fishing and said “I’m a bit hungry, I think I’m going to eat an oyster”. And it must have been a bold man that first did so.
The thing about eating oysters is that there wasn't a first man who did it. We evolved into doing it. Kissing each other on each cheek - was first done by some old roué in France who said: "Come here my dear; let me show you my new discovery. Now, close your eyes..." and sWhat Does a Steak, and a Clean Office Have in Common?o kissing each other on each cheek was invented. Possibly.
Oysters are not my thing particularly. I love fish but just not oysters. When I order a seafood grill at The Lure in Camarillo, Laura, our favorite server knows without having to ask me, to substitute the oysters for scallops. As much as I don’t like oysters. It's not oysters that were the big foolish mouth-adventure for mankind; the real idiot was the first man to eat a well-done steak. We are so familiar and comfortable with cooked food; we can barely comprehend how strange it must have tasted.
Nobody has the faintest idea when the first steak was grilled; actually, a lot of people have faint ideas, and they range from 10,000 to 2.5m years ago. But imagine, all you have ever eaten is raw meat. Burnt meat must have been truly disgusting. Everything about it is alien. The temperature, the texture and the taste. Our palates are a combination of acquired instinct; poisons taste bitter, mother's milk is sweet and learnt cultural and aesthetic prejudice, like the Chinese don't drink milk, the Jewish don't eat pork, and everyone in peep-toe heels likes champagne apparently.
So, burnt meat won't have been an eureka moment, but the benefits of cooked meat aren't about aesthetics. Nicety follows necessity. If you roast your meat, it's easier and faster to eat. You can consume more, and this is all-important for little naked men who are competing with a host of predators and scavengers that come with integral butchery sets in their mouths or claws. Cooked meat allowed us to absorb the protein we needed to make big brains and come up with other good ideas after flame-grilled sirloin.